Living to Prowl

Sam Pickering

Essays by the New England professor who inspired Dead Poets Society

Reviews

"The art of the essay as delivered by Mr. Pickering is the art of the front porch ramble."
—New York Times Book Review

"Pickering takes up the stance of the congenial amateur, familiar with a great many things but expert in none, frank about the world's convictions, enemy to pomposity, a representative man who enjoys without apology the pleasures of household and flesh."
—Scott Russell Sanders


More / Hide

Description
Reading Pickering is like taking a walk with your oldest, wittiest friend, said Smithsonian magazine. Living to Prowl, Sam Pickering's ninth collection of essays, finds the acclaimed author walking familiar paths, taking time to enjoy family, friends, nature, and other simple pleasures.

Like Pickering's earlier books, this collection records in highly personal and idiosyncratic terms a year in the life of a man with a tenacious commitment to pausing and wondering. Moving easily between humor and seriousness, the mundane and the philosophical, stark truth and evocative fictions, his essays saunter through life and rummage through lives. As Pickering himself puts it, Living to Prowl is meant to make people "turn away from the 'razzleum-dazzleum' of dream and abstraction to see the rich greens and blues at their doorsteps."
Page count: 192 pp.
Illustrated
Trim size: 5.25 x 8.25

Cloth
List price: $26.95
978-0-8203-1940-7
02/01/1998
  

View Cart



Sam Pickering is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut. He has written eight other essay collections, including A Continuing Education and The Right Distance (Georgia). He lives in Storrs, Connecticut.